Part 1 Summary

Silent Snow, Secret Snow takes place during just one day, although it uses several flashbacks to fill in the narrative. The short story is set almost entirely in the mind of a young boy, Paul. As the story opens, he is sitting in school during a geography lesson. As the class discusses continents and the equator, Paul is barely aware of what is going on around him. Instead, he is pondering his big secret. At first, the reader is not sure what this marvelous, important secret is. Paul is focusing on how the unknown secret started. It began on a December morning, as he lay in his bed listening for the postman. Every morning, Paul could hear the postman come around the corner, as he got closer to Paul's house. However, that morning, he did not hear him come around the corner. In...